THEY GOT RIFFED!

Dearest Friends,

As it turns out, Paula's and Nellie's husbands had both fallen victim to a Reduction in Forces, or R.I.F.  The platform that John and Tim had been assigned to was complete and ready for start up.  It had been turned over to the crew that would be operating it, and the construction barge our hubbies had been living on was being sent elsewhere.  The only reason B&R still wanted John out there is that Aramco (the owners of the platform) had suddenly decided there must be a small crew on stand-by throughout the start up process, just in case something went wrong.  Since B&R's team didn't actually have jobs to do, however, they just sat in their quarters all day, everyday.  Talk about boring!  This start-up just happened to coincide with our scheduled home leave, which is why it got cancelled.

Such is life with an engineer, and the one thing about our marriage that I never really came to grips with.  It always seemed like every time we'd try and plan a vacation, or do something special for our anniversary, I'd get a sheepish call from my poor hubby at the last minute, saying "Um, Beck?  I don't know how to tell you this, but..."  Fifteen years later, when we returned to Indonesia with our kids, I finally got fed up with the situation, and summoned up the courage to take a stand!  But that's a story for another day.

Of course, at this point I was still pretty clueless about what all was going on.  All I knew was that S&BD were leaving for sure in mid-May,  my other two best friends might not be far behind them, I hardly ever got to see my husband, and our only option if we wanted to go home was to just quit this job, without having anything else already lined up and waiting.  Well, that would be really difficult, because that was something we had both been taught growing up, that you just...don't...do!

Soooo, that's when I started to get stressed, and as I mentioned before, when Miss Becky gets stressed, shit happens.  According to my diary, on April 27th there was a "little accident with a car in the souk", then on the 30th, I stopped by the office to check for mail, where I found two letters from John and a lovely linen tablecloth sent from one of our Irish boys who had returned home, as a thank you for all the home-cooked meals at our place.  From there I went straight to the grocery store, but instead of following my automatic routine of shutting off the car, putting the keys in my purse, etc., I paused for a moment to rip open and read the letters from John, then proceeded to lock my keys in the car.  Of course, I couldn't call my hubby to bring me a spare, could I?  And, since this was one of the first new cars not to have a knob thingy that a coat hangar could grab onto, we ended up having to bust out a window.  On May 1st I wrote that "I almost got arrested with Beth", on May 5th I "got really pissed off with my boss" and then I came down sick.  What the heck was going on here?  This was so not the usual Miss Becky.  For one thing, I almost never get sick!  Could this really be a result of simple stress, or could it have something to with that stupid "Ski Team Diet" I had been going on each time John went offshore.  Or, maybe I'd just fried my brain, with all the sunbathing we did over there!